Take a moment to imagine: you’re walking down the streets of the Upper East Side, camera in hand. The light is fading, and you’re not sure you’ll capture many more pictures that day, but you’re enjoying the scenery as you wander along a tree-lined street. On your right are luxurious high-rises, doormen guarding the entrances like dragons guarding their gold-laden caves. On your left is a beautiful museum done in the Art Nouveau architectural style. But what really captures your attention is a stone set of stairs at the end of the street, so on a whim, you go up them.
You immediately find yourself in the leafy sanctum of Central Park, on a path clogged with determined after-work joggers clad in brightly-colored lycra. Running both in packs and by themselves, you’re struck with the sensation that you have discovered an entirely new species — a hybrid between an exotic parrot and a particularly anxious hamster, perhaps. Part of you wants to stop one of these determined Manhattanites and ask what they’re running from. Their soaring rent? The pressures of their career? Their most recent Bumble date? But you just snap a few photos of this odd herd, telling yourself that you don’t want to cause a scene, and continue along the path.
Eventually the trees along the path give way to reveal a lake, skyscrapers looming on the opposite shore. You step out of the way of the runners, moving to the edge of the water, and lean against the fence that surrounds the lake. A duck floats lazily on the surface, and a half-forgotten memory from your high school English class rises from the depths of your mind.
“Where do the ducks go in the winter?” you murmur, laughing a little bit as you do. It’s been years since you thought about that book, and about the paper you wrote to your English teacher, in which you ranted about how Holden Caulfield clearly needed to learn something about duck migration patterns, if it bothered him so much.
The duck, as if to prove your point, suddenly takes flight — presumably to begin its own migration. You lift your camera to capture the moment, but you’re too slow, and the bird escapes the frame before you click the shutter. You sigh, not expecting the shot to be much good. After all, it’s twilight now, and the park is shrouded in the kind of dusk that you’ve found rarely yields good pictures. And the duck is gone, already just a speck against the purple-blue sky.
Yet when you’re going through your photos later, you’re particularly struck by this one. You don’t even remember taking it at first, and then the memory of the park and the duck come flooding back. This was the accidental photo. But it becomes your favorite picture of Manhattan, and quite possibly your favorite picture you’ve ever taken. And you smile, knowing that it happened by chance.
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